July 04, 2016 -- On the heels of Tuesday's announcement by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) releasing its final Part 107 regulations governing small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS), MAPPS, the association of private sector surveying mapping and geospatial firms, today confirmed that Randy Willis, Manager of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Emerging Technologies Team with oversight of Unmanned Aircraft will be a speaker at the MAPPS Summer Conference, July 16-20, at the Grand Traverse Resort in Traverse City, Michigan.

The MAPPS Conference will be the surveying and mapping community's first opportunity to learn first-hand from FAA what the rules require and have questions answered specific to commercial geospatial UAS operations.

UAS is the most revolutionary new technology to impact the geospatial community in decades.
The emerging global market for business services using drones is valued at over $127 billion, with geospatial being one of the largest segments of that market.

"MAPPS has been fully engaged with FAA on issues related to the use of UAS in geospatial since 2008. This rule is a major step forward and we are delighted FAA is once again attending a MAPPS conference to engage with a dialogue on this important rule," said MAPPS Executive Director John Palatiello. The rule will become effective in mid-August.

Formed in 1982,
MAPPS is the only national association exclusively comprised of private firms in the remote sensing, spatial data and geographic information systems field in the U.S. The MAPPS membership spans the entire spectrum of the geospatial community, including member firms engaged in satellite and airborne remote sensing, surveying, photogrammetry, aerial photography, LiDAR, hydrography, bathymetry, charting, aerial and satellite image processing, GPS, and GIS data collection and conversion services. MAPPS also includes associate member firms, which are companies that provide hardware, software, products and services to the geospatial profession in the U.S. and other firms from around the world. Independent consultant members are sole proprietors engaged in consulting in or to the geospatial profession, or provides a consulting service of interest to the geospatial profession.